This book was written chiefly whilst tramping along the Caucasian and Crimean shores of the Black Sea, and on a pilgrimage with Russian peasants to Jerusalem. Most of it was written in the open air, sitting on logs in the pine forests or on bridges over mountain streams, by the side of my morning fire or on the sea sand after the morning dip. It is not so much a book about Russia as about the tramp. It is the life of the wanderer and seeker, the walking hermit, the rebel against modern conditions and commercialism who has gone out into the wilderness.

ng turning swiftly to night
before my eyes. The sun was not due to set, but the western horizon
seemed as it were to have risen and gone forth to meet it. A great
black bank of cloud had come up out of the west and hidden away the
sun before his time.

I hastened to put my tea things into my pack and take to the road, for
it was necessary to find a convenient night place. In a quarter of an
hour it was night. At regular intervals all along the road were the
brightly lit lamps of glow-worms; they looked like miniature street
lights, the fitting illumination of a road mostly occupied by
hedgehogs.

I found a dry resting-place under a tree and laid myself out to sleep,
watching the moon who had just risen perfectly, out of the East; but
I had hardly settled myself when I was surprised by a gleam of
lightning. Turning to the west, I saw the vast array of cloud that had
overtaken the sun, coming forward into the night--eclipsing the sky.